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CapitalPress.com
July 15, 2016
People & Places
Capital Press
IN DEFENSE OF DAIRIES
Larry Stap speaks
up for the industry,
advocates more
transparency
Western
Innovator
Larry Stap
By DON JENKINS
Age: 62:
Capital Press
LYNDEN, Wash. — Lar-
ry Stap has advice for fellow
dairy farmers.
“We probably can be a lit-
tle more transparent in how
we handle our nutrients,” he
says. “If we’re doing a good
job, what do we have to hide?”
By “nutrients,” Stap, of
course, refers to manure, a
substance of substantial inter-
est in Washington state.
The Lummi Nation’s pol-
luted shellfish beds in Por-
tage Bay are downriver from
a cluster of Whatcom County
dairies, including Stap’s.
The shellfish beds were
contaminated in the 1990s,
but the bacteria levels dropped
after the state and county ad-
opted manure-handling rules.
Over the past few years,
however, unhealthy bacteria
levels have returned. Dair-
ies are fretting about being
singled out and sued, even
though cities, wildlife, sep-
tic tanks, other farms, rural
development and economic
activities upstream in Canada
are among other potential pol-
lution sources.
No easy answer
“If there was an easy an-
swer to why (pollution) lev-
els are increasing in Portage
Bay, we would have identified
it and fixed it,” said Andrea
Hood, the state’s coordinator
of the Whatcom Clean Water
Program. “The strategy is to
look at all the sources and ad-
dress all the sources and con-
centrate on where we have op-
portunities for improvement.”
Meanwhile, the Washing-
ton Department of Ecology
took the position last year
that standard manure lagoons
leak. From this proposition
flows regulatory possibilities.
Business: Owner, Twin
Brook Creamery in Lynden,
Wash., with wife, Debbie, and
their daughter and son-in-law,
Michelle and Mark Tolsma.
Positions: President of Save
Family Farming; president
of North Lynden Watershed
Improvement District.
Don Jenkins/Capital Press
Whatcom County, Wash., dairy farmer Larry Stap talks about the 1.4 million-gallon manure storage
tank June 14 at his farm near the Canadian border. Stap hosted a tour for the state House Agriculture
Committee.
On top of this came What’s
Upstream, the Environmental
Protection
Agency-funded
lobbying campaign by the
Swinomish Indian tribe and
several environmental groups
for mandatory 100-foot buf-
fers along rivers and streams.
Photos of dairy cows
standing in creeks figured
prominently in the cam-
paign’s imagery, even though
the pictures weren’t taken in
Washington.
Finger-pointing
In response, a farmer ad-
vocacy group, Save Family
Farming, was formed to count-
er the allegations that farmers
are unregulated polluters. Stap
serves as the group’s president.
He jokes about being rail-
roaded into the position, but
also says finger-pointing at
dairies “kind of got my blood
boiling.”
Whatcom County has few-
er dairies and fewer cows and
handles manure better than in
the 1990s, he said.
“How can a diminishing
factor be increasing the prob-
lem?” Stap asked. “It didn’t
add up to me at all.”
He said that over the years
he has become more of an in-
dustry advocate. “Not many
others were very involved in
telling our story,” he said.
“I also have a brand to de-
fend,” he said.
Stap, 62, owns Twin Brook
Creamery with his wife, Deb-
bie, and their son-in-law and
daughter, Mark and Michelle
Tolsma.
His Dutch immigrant
great-grandparents Jacob and
Tryntje Stap cleared the land
near the Canadian border in
1910.
Until about a decade ago,
Stap belonged to the Darigold
cooperative. The farm has
about 180 mature cows. Rath-
er than try to expand the herd,
the family decided to add val-
ue to what they produced.
Twin
Brook
Cream-
ery looked for stores to sell
slow-pasteurized, non-homog-
enized Jersey milk in glass
bottles.
‘Uphill battle’
“It was an uphill battle, to
be honest with you,” Stap said.
One grocery store chain
picked up Twin Brook milk,
though, and the phone start-
ed ringing. The milk is sold
in Western Washington and
Portland. Stap said he spends
about an hour a day answering
emails from customers.
“You get direct consumer
interaction, which is absolute-
ly rewarding,” Stap said.
Embracing his advice on
transparency, Stap hosts farm
tours and speaks in videos to
showcase dairy practices.
In a recent Facebook video,
Stap talked about his three new
robotic-milking
machines.
Each represents a $250,000
investment.
Because the machines
are always ready, the cows
choose when to step up and get
milked.
Robotic help
“No human is involved in
the decision when they get
milked,” Stap says on the
video. “It’s been fun to watch
our girls develop from a herd
mentality to an individual
mentality.”
Within days, the video had
been viewed on Facebook
nearly 100,000 times. More
than 100 people left com-
ments.
Many were impressed by
the technology and liked the
idea of cows controlling their
schedules. “OMG! What will
they came up with next!! It’s
Quote: “I over the years
have become more and
more of an advocate for our
industry as not many others
were very involved in telling
our story. It now has become
even more of a passion.”
really great for the cows!”
read a typical comment.
Stap said the comments
were unexpected, amazing
and welcomed.
Lagoon replaced
Less
high-tech
but
more to the point of con-
trolling manure is the dairy’s
1.4 million-gallon above-ground
steel tank, which replaced an
earthen lagoon in 2014.
Back then, a mole bur-
rowed a hole in the lagoon.
Manure slurry ran out and
pooled near the lagoon, about
20 feet from a ditch that runs
into Fish Trap Creek. The
creek runs into the Nooksack
River, which empties into
Portage Bay.
“Boy, did that make you
nervous,” Stap said. “I didn’t
need that kind of liability.
What if (a leak) happened in
the middle of the night?”
Stap said the tank cost
about $300,000, with two-
thirds paid by the Natural Re-
sources Conservation Service.
“The general public is de-
manding water quality. This is
one way their taxpayer dollars
can go to meeting water-qual-
ity standards,” Stap said.
Farmers lobbying for the right to fix own tractors
By NICHOLAS BERGIN
Lincoln Journal Star
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) —
Mick Minchow’s tractors are
marvels of modern machinery.
They have air conditioning,
guidance systems, satellite ra-
dio and more sensors than he
can shake a corn cob at, all
kept running by computer sys-
tems and software.
But there’s one thing the
Waverly farmer doesn’t have:
the right to fix his John Deere
8235 R if it goes on the fritz.
Gone are the days when
farmers could be their own
mechanics. Just taking a peek
under the metaphorical hood
of the computers that run the
big tractor could put Minchow
in violation of the federal Digi-
tal Millennium Copyright Act.
It’s the same for digital
products from cellphones to
printers to concrete crushers
that rely on computer pro-
grams to run.
Nebraska is one of four
states to consider legislation
that would require manufac-
turers to make diagnostic, ser-
vice and technical information
available to farmers and in-
dependent repair technicians.
Calendar
The others are Massachusetts,
Minnesota and New York.
While the Nebraska Fair
Repair Bill (LB1072) failed
to gain traction before sena-
tors adjourned this spring, the
issue is far from dead. It has
been referred to the Agricul-
ture Committee for study over
the summer, and advocates
are pushing for the bill to be
reintroduced during the next
session.
Now, the makers of off-road
and farm equipment and many
consumer electronics require
their products to be repaired by
certified technicians.
Grinding gears
That means if Minchow’s
tractor stops working he has no
choice but to call the dealer. He
can’t check the system codes
himself to decide whether it’s
an easy fix like changing a filter
or something more complicat-
ed. And that grinds the Waver-
ly-area farmer’s gears.
“I want it to be my call. I
don’t want to have to make two
trips to the service department
— one to diagnose it and one to
fix it,” said Minchow, who has
been farming north of Waverly
for more than 40 years.
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Wednesday, July 20
Oregon Pesticide Analytical and
Response Center Board meeting,
9 a.m.-noon, Portland State Office
Building, Room 1-B, 800 NE Oregon
St., Portland. www.oregon.gov/ODA/
programs/Pesticides/Pages/PARC.
aspx
And as dealerships have
closed or consolidated, he said,
technicians have gotten farther
away and service bills more ex-
pensive.
Who owns software?
John Deere, in a 2014 com-
ment to the U.S. Copyright Of-
fice, said the people who buy its
tractors don’t own the software
that makes them run. Instead,
each has an “implied license for
the life of the vehicle to operate
the vehicle.”
In some cases, the company
said, software could be subject
to third-party restrictions and
accessing it could violate copy-
right, trade secret or contractual
rights.
But farmers work when
they can, and every hour mat-
ters when storms, frost and mud
leave them with few suitable
days. A malfunctioning com-
bine can bring the fall harvest
to a standstill.
Waiting for a dealer to diag-
nose and fix a problem could
mean hours, days or weeks lost.
Proponents of Nebraska’s
Fair Repair Bill say it would
let farmers work on their own
equipment and allow indepen-
dent mechanics to help get ma-
chines running quicker.
The Nebraska Farm Bureau,
the state’s largest agriculture
advocacy group, has not tak-
en a stance on the issue but its
members are talking about it,
said Jordan Dux, the state Farm
Bureau’s director of national
affairs.
“For the time being, we re-
main neutral on it but that very
well might change as we work
through our policy develop-
ment process,” he said during a
recent web forum.
Economy slows
Some Farm Bureau mem-
bers, Dux said, are concerned
about taking business away
from dealerships at a time when
the ag economy has slowed and
few farmers are buying new
machinery.
“Keeping those dealerships
in their communities is import-
ant,” he said. “Repairs are go-
ing to be the way a lot of these
dealerships are going to make
money for the time being sim-
ply because folks aren’t buying
a lot of new equipment.”
Another concern, Dux said,
centers on what farmers should
do if they buy equipment and
find the previous owner made
changes to the software they
don’t like.
Kyle Wiens, a software en-
gineer and leading figure in
the national Right to Repair
movement, said in the same
web seminar that new owners
of used equipment would have
what they need to restore fac-
tory defaults if manufacturers
provided diagnostic tools and
software.
John Hansen, president
of the state’s second largest
agricultural advocacy organi-
zation, the Nebraska Farmers
Union, supports the Right to
Repair efforts, saying farmers
should have the same option
to get their tractor fixed by an
independent mechanic as they
do when they need to get their
truck fixed.
“This is a fairness issue.
Folks in agriculture shouldn’t
be singled out and treated dif-
ferently than the automotive
customers or truck customers,”
Hansen said in the web forum.
“Competition is what makes
our system of economics better.
When you take competition out
of the equation there is almost
always a reduction in choice
and quality and an increase in
cost to the consumer.”
1-800-765-9055
5:30 p.m. Columbia County Fair-
grounds, 58892 Saulser Road, St.
Helens, Ore.
www.techhelp.org/events/279/fsp-
caboisejuly2016/
adults, $10 ages 6-12 inclusive). Fair
parking is free.
Thursday, July 21
Tuesday, July 26
Wednesday, July 27
Fresno Food Expo, 8 a.m.-8 p.m.,
Fresno, Calif., Convention & Enter-
tainment Center. http://www.fresno-
foodexpo.com
FSPCA Preventive Controls
for Human Food Course, 8 a.m.-5
p.m. Yanke Family Research Cen-
ter, 220 E. Parkcenter Blvd., Boise,
Idaho. The new FSMA regulation
requires every processing facility
to have a trained resource person
or “Preventive Controls Qualified
Individual“ who has completed a
specialized training course such
as the one developed by the Food
Safety Preventive Controls Alliance
(FSPCA) that is recognized by the
FDA. This person will oversee the
implementation of the facility’s food
safety plan and other key tasks.
www.techhelp.org/events/279/fsp-
caboisejuly2016/
Friday, July 22
Columbia County Fair, 10 a.m.-11
p.m. Columbia County Fairgrounds,
58892 Saulser Road, St. Helens, Ore.
Saturday, July 23
Columbia County Fair, 10 a.m.-11
p.m. Columbia County Fairgrounds,
58892 Saulser Road, St. Helens, Ore.
Sunday, July 24
Columbia County Fair, 10 a.m.-
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FSPCA Preventive Controls
for Human Food Course, 8 a.m.-5
p.m. Yanke Family Research Cen-
ter, 220 E. Parkcenter Blvd., Boise,
Idaho. The new FSMA regulation
requires every processing facility
to have a trained resource person
or “Preventive Controls Qualified
Individual“ who has completed a
specialized training course such
as the one developed by the Food
Safety Preventive Controls Alliance
(FSPCA) that is recognized by the
FDA. This person will oversee the
implementation of the facility’s food
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